


Familiarity

by freefallings



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Coda, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, after house gets shot and wakes up from the coma, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 00:47:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30114576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallings/pseuds/freefallings
Summary: “House?”The voice is hoarse, loud in the quiet, and it’s sound makes House ache.(Please don’t let this be a dream)
Relationships: Greg House/James Wilson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70





	Familiarity

**Author's Note:**

> this might be wildly ooc, if it is stay quiet :)
> 
> hope someone enjoys the first thing ive written in years <3

There’s a warm hand holding his own.   
  


It feels familiar; the skin a little rough from decades of work, grip gentle but unrelenting. Reassuring. Their hands are resting on something soft. The smell of fresh linen tells him bedsheets is the best bet, which obviously means he’s lying in a bed somewhere, but he doesn’t think he’s at home.

With that comes the smell of disinfectant, followed by something else familiar that he can’t quite place, which confuses him slightly because that _does_ smell like home, before he moves on to take in the noises around him. 

A steady beeping to his left, chatter from somewhere distant that sounds muffled by glass, the low hum of conversation in the room, a quiet ticking. Everything feels slow and heavy. His body is acting as if it’s being pulled back down to the earth, all but being sucked into the mattress beneath him, and he’s finding it difficult to stay awake. It makes opening his eyes even more of a struggle, but he succeeds eventually, fighting against the invisible weight on his eyelids. The lights are too bright, too intrusive, and he has to close them almost immediately so they stop burning. He takes a steady breath, trying to work himself up to open his eyes again, when he feels a sigh against his left shoulder.

Oh right.

There’s a warm hand holding his, and it’s owner is lying beside him.

The additional weight is more noticeable now that he’s regaining more consciousness (how long has he even been asleep?). There’s soft hair against his cheek, under his nose. There’s an arm placed lightly across his stomach (carefully avoiding the wounds he definitely now feels, a great way to remember he had been shot), almost as if it’s scared to be there-  
  
There’s no pain in his right leg.

Suddenly the lights don’t bother him anymore. All he wants is to be awake. 

Once his eyes adjust, the first thing he sees is the ICU. There’s a TV in the far corner, though he can’t quite make out what’s playing from here, nor does he exactly care. There’s one other patient in here with him; a woman slightly younger than him, with two people sitting next to her bed drinking coffee, speaking quietly to each other while the patient sleeps. They don’t take notice of him. He doesn’t want them to. 

He’s interrupted with visions of a man (Moriarty?) as his memories begin to creep back towards him. Unprompted, sudden, unwanted. They were in the hospital together, right? They were in the same room together, but- _wait, no._ That hadn’t been real.  
  
(Was he still dreaming? Did he ever actually wake up? It would explain his leg pain disappearing-)

Something shifts beside him that puts the dread sliding down his spine on hold.

“House?” 

The voice is hoarse, loud in the quiet, and it’s sound makes _House_ ache. 

(Please don’t let this be a dream)

He turns his head faster than he should have, the room spinning for a second before everything comes back into focus. It’s then that he finally gets to see the body next to him, who it belongs to; wide, brown eyes, _kind eyes,_ with dark shadows beneath them; brown hair messed up from sleep, looking like it’s been anxiously raked through over and over; white shirt wrinkled and bunched up around the elbows; concern etched into every feature of this face House has burned into his memory. He’s often thought that if he was given the option to discard everything, to only be left with the memory of _him,_ he’d be okay with that. His best friend. 

So that was what smelt familiar; he can identify it now. _His_ cologne, their shampoo from home. Him. It’s always him.

“Greg? Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?” The hand that previously lay across House’s stomach is reaching up, coming to rest on House’s cheek, _Wilson’s_ thumb brushing just below his eye nervously. House lies stock still, just _looking,_ his leg temporarily forgotten. 

He should say something.

He has to; Wilson’s _here,_ and this time it doesn’t feel fake ( _please please please_ ). He’s here, warm and whole, looking at him with an adoration House once would have scoffed at, but has grown to accept more easily. He’s probably been worrying himself into oblivion. He always does. How long has it been since he’s gone home? House doesn’t think he can remember Wilson being there when his team rushed him to the ER- who had to be the one to call him and tell him his partner had been shot? 

He really should say something. Say that he’s alright, tell him about his leg, tell him he loves him.

Instead, what he comes up with is: “You’re taking up too much room on my bed.”

Wilson’s lips part, his face adopting a look of shock before a bark of a laugh is pulled from him. The corners of his mouth turn up as his smile grows wider in disbelief and finally, _finally,_ his eyes don’t look as sad. House loves that expression. He loves it even more when he’s the one to coax it out. He doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of surprising him. 

“You’re such an asshole.”

The next minute lips are brushing against his, and both of their bodies sag back into the bed as any tension keeping them fraught disappears. There’s no heat to it, no urgency, and it’s more tired than their usual kisses. It’s more like a conversation; silent praise, thanking any higher power listening, and reassurances, presses of lips again and again because, sure, they’re exhausted, but they never tire of this. Of each other. House is better at this than the talking. Words get either stuck in his throat or voiced too harshly, House maybe too hopeful their recipient will understand their hidden meaning. There’s no fear of screwing up what he means when they communicate like this. 

When Wilson breaks away he lets their foreheads rest together, hands solid presences on each other’s bodies, reminders that they’re alive and together. Connecting them. House lets his eyes open again, happy to keep drinking up the sight before him selfishly, and Wilson seems content letting him. 

“How do you feel?” Wilson’s eyes stay closed as he speaks.

House hums thoughtfully. “Probably like I’ve been shot.”

“You should have a doctor look into that.”

“I would, but my primary physician’s busy. Apparently his partner, who's also named House, was shot, so he's preoccupied.” House gasps theatrically, "Sounds just like you!"

Wilson chuckles at that. “What a small world.”

Behind him, House hears two sets of footsteps quietly leave the room, the sliding of the glass door letting the sound of life out in the hall try and pry its way inside their bubble before the door snaps shut on top of it. At least they have a little more privacy now, House thinks. There’s still the other patient, but who knows, maybe she’s in a coma. 

_The ketamine._

“James,” his voice is soft this time, no louder than a whisper. Wilson hums in response, unmoving, and even without looking at him House would’ve known he smiled at the sound of his first name. “Did they do what I asked?”

Wilson opens his eyes, blinking a little at the light. His eyebrows raise slightly when he realises what he’s talking about. “They put you in a coma. Ketamine. Cuddy told me you were the one to order that, but we never knew why.”

House can’t believe it. He can’t believe that it _worked_. 

“Greg?”

“My leg feels better.”

“... _what_?”

“Sure, it’ll sound better a second time. My leg feels-“

“Shut up, I heard you,” Wilson says, though there’s no menace in his voice. He goes to sit up fully, and they both realise just how little area this bed covers as he almost slips over the edge. He awkwardly regains his balance (and House does the very loving act of laughing at him) before he opts for standing up instead, a hand coming up to push back through his hair. House misses how cramped the bed was. Though the twinge in his side says it’s probably for the best. “Did you know that would happen when you told Cameron you wanted ketamine?”

“Call it a hunch.”

“How?”

“Long story. Weird story. Lots of hallucinating and killing patients,” Wilson does that thing, one eye squinting as his eyebrows furrow, and _holy shit it’s so good to see him_. House wouldn’t say that out loud though. “I’ll tell you later, need to wake up some more first.”

At that Wilson nods, looking both like he wants to keep talking about it and unfairly apologetic. That’s one of his more annoying habits; feeling as if he’s done something to inconvenience or hurt House, when he’s pretty sure Wilson’s the only person who would never try to do either. Wilson slowly makes his way back to the bed, pulling a chair closer as he sits and stretches his legs out in front of him. It only takes a second for his hand to hold House’s again. Everything about them is inevitable. 

It’s only then that House’s brain catches up to the fact that they’re holding hands. At the hospital. The hospital where they both work. In a room with glass walls.

… after kissing in bed in front of a patient and their family and who knows who else that was passing by.

It’s like Wilson senses the exact moment this realisation dawns on him, watching House glance down at their hands, around the room and back again, his eyes widening. Wilson snorts quietly, bringing House’s hand up to brush a kiss against his knuckles. 

“Didn’t realise me getting shot would turn us into exhabitionists, would’ve tried it a lot sooner.”

Wilson flicks his forearm. “No one’s watching us. We’re not even doing anything-“

“Not _yet-“_

“-But _yes_ , your team knows about us now.”

House groans, closing his eyes as his head falls back onto the pillow. “But it was so _fun_ trying to see how long it would take them to find out on their own!” Not to mention the fact that he had a hundred bucks riding on them never figuring it out, even when both House _and_ Wilson made it easy to see. “What did you do, treat me like your very own Sleeping Beauty?”

“I didn’t _do_ anything.”

“So you told them outright?”

“We both agreed we wouldn’t do that.”

“Then what gave it away? After so long?”

Wilson sighs, wrapping both hands around the one of House’s that was still in his grasp, resting them against his chest. He didn’t miss the way two of Wilson’s fingers pressed gently on his pulse point. “I’m not sure. I was down in the clinic when it happened. Cameron came and found me, told me you’d been…” 

His eyes go as sad as they had been when House woke up, and the joke he was going to make dissolved on his tongue as he squeezed Wilson’s hand once, then twice. He had a feeling there was going to be a lot of pulse checking at home for a while. 

One side of Wilson’s mouth quirks up in a smile, his eyes glancing to the gauze on House’s neck but quickly shaking himself out of it.

“After that I was here with you almost all of the time, and even though I never did anything to prove we were together, I guess they just _knew._ Though Cameron did walk in on me kissing your forehead the first night.”

“Idiot,” House would deny anyone who said his voice resembled anything close to fond. 

“Your idiot, though.”

“Unfortunately.”

They sit like that for a few minutes, Wilson messing with House’s fingers as House closes his eyes, resting back and listening to the faint mumble of the television. For someone who’s been passed out in a coma the last couple days, he sure does feel like he could sleep another week. It’s when Wilson’s fidgeting with his ring finger that House speaks up.

“Do you have my wedding ring?”

“In my jacket pocket in my office. Needed to remove any excess metal. You never wear it at work, how come you had it on that day?”

“It was going to be my next hint-drop to the team before the awkward shooting situation got in the way.”

“Fair enough.”

… Hang on.

House lifts his head off the pillow again. “What did they say to you that makes you so sure they know?”

“They didn’t, I just know from the way they look at us when they come to check on you.”

House smirks. “So they think we’re together, they don’t exactly know we’re _married_?”

Wilson grimaces, the terms of their bet obviously returning to his memory. “That’s not fair-“

“ _You_ bet we could make them figure out that we were _married_ -“

“Together! I said together!”

“Pretty sure you said married.”

“Oh, that’s basically the same thing.”

House scoffs. “That’s not how you felt when you were trying to telepathically tell me you wanted me to propose.” 

“We’d been together ten years! Look,” Wilson laughs, leaning over to rest his head on the edge of the bed, freeing one of his hands to prop himself up. “It’s only a hundred bucks, Greg, just accept I won.” 

House sees the signs that his husband hasn’t been sleeping, sees any sign that he’s aged some since they’ve first met (not that he doesn’t have plenty himself), and every element only adds to how beautiful he is. How much he means to him.

Still not boring.

_I’m the one who won getting to be with you._

House will never give the bastard the satisfaction of voicing _that_ one, either. 

**Author's Note:**

> hey shawty, you’re still here? you read til the end? poggers 
> 
> thanks for reading <3


End file.
